This is awesome! If you are the parent or guardian of a Special Needs student please read this article about a college for Doecisl Needs students. Don’t be so quick to put them on a track that doesn’t allow for further education and be sure they have a strong purposeful transition plan.
Testing, Tutors, and Summer Camps
It is that time of the year again when you need to be sure to have tutoring set up for your children. Even if it is tutoring for enrichment, it will benefit your child. It is also time to start thinking of summer camps and programs for your child. Next month most places will open up enrollment.
It is also time to be sure that your high school student in 10th and 11th grade have taken the PSAT and SAT. Be sure to have your child take the SAT at least three times in order to really see a growth pattern in their scores. Now is the time to take charge of this because school counselors don’t always follow through with students and families in regards to testing on a regular basis.
This school year is almost over in regards to instructional days. So many days in May and beyond will be dedicated to testing. This is also the time of year that many districts are implementing new programs and many of these programs have pre testing components which will also take away from instructional time in school. Be sure that you are reviewing work, even class work with your children daily. You need to see what is happening and how comfortable your children are with the information they are learning.
Report Card Pick Up and Free College Applications
It is that time of the year for most districts in NC for students to get report cards and time where high school students can apply for colleges for free. Please be sure to meet with your children’s teachers. It is vital to meet with them during this time because things are going to start picking up in class and with homework at this time of the year. Also, you want to find out what you can do as a parent to enrich your child’s academics.
If you have a junior or senior be sure you talking to their counselor just as often as you check in with their teachers. As a matter of fact when my oldest daughter was in high school I had my calendar set to touch base with her counselor and with the teachers in classes that she was on or above grade level. For the classes I was concerned about and she was making B’s and C’s I contacted those teachers daily.
Also, take advantage of free college applications dates and for any SAT preps and testing sessions that are happening in your district. The more they take the prep classes and take the SAT the better the score will be. I had my oldest daughter take it three times.
Stay on top of things so that you won’t get any surprises at grading time.
Teacher Summertime Burnout
Summertime burnout is very different from your periodical burnout sensations that you have throughout the school year. Over the summer you find yourself reevaluating why you chose to go into education in the first place. You also feel that you spend more time preparing things that will very possibly be changed by the time the school year gets started. For teachers the summer is not a break. The summer is when they take a few weeks to rejuvenate and then begin planning. With all of the demands and challenges that teachers face throughout the year, the only way to keep their head above water is to map out time during the summer to get a jump on things for the Fall. Many will use the summer creating lesson plans, finding resources to support lessons, researching ways to make their instruction more engaging, and simply brainstorm thinking outside the box things to really pull in every child.
These things lead to summertime burnout. By the end of July many teachers undoubtedly begin to count down the weeks and/or days before they have to report back to work for beginning of the year meetings and classroom set up(which is almost a certain to be done after hours due to mandatory meetings throughout the school day). There are many ways to avoid the summertime burnout as a teacher. Here are a few suggestions:
1. Go into the summer with a mapped out schedule of times you will devote to preparing for the upcoming school year
2. Consciously find time to disconnect to school and pamper yourself
3. Map out a schedule for the upcoming school year so you will not over extend yourself with voluntary committees and school activities
4. Write down in a journal one reason each day you became a teacher and what you have to offer our children
These things are simple to do and will definitely help keep you in a positive state of mind. Avoid the summertime burnout and get excited about the newness of this upcoming year!
What Works Clearning House
What works clearinghouse is an excellent resource. Please use link below to view what they have to offer.
Selfie-related wording dropped from Wake County policy According to Wake Ed and News and Observer
Wake Ed
May 26, 2015
Selfie-related wording dropped from Wake County policy
The Wake County school system is taking another look Tuesday at updating its policy on student use of technology, but this time it’s minus any wording that could be construed as banning students from taking selfies.
The revised policy the school board’s policy committee had looked at in November said that “students are prohibited from taking pictures or videos with any device unless directed by a teacher.” Board members immediately raised a red flag that the wording covered selfies, prompting staff to say they’d talk to the attorney who drafted the wording.
That wording about pictures or videos is no longer part of the policy the committee will review Tuesday.
This new version of the policy does have some additional material, including saying “the superintendent may use any means available to request the removal of personal websites that substantially disrupt the school environment or that utilize school system or individual school names, logos, or trademarks without permission.”
School administrators have said the technology use policy needs to be updated to reflect how much things have changed since it was last revised in 2010. For instance, Wake now is encouraging students to bring their own electronic devices to school for use in classrooms.
Other items on the committee’s agenda Tuesday include reviewing policies dealing with bullying, harassment and non-discrimination. The policies are being reviewed because Wake is migrating its current policies to the format used by the N.C. School Boards Association.
NEA Preventing Summer Slide Article
6 Ways To Use Reading to Prevent the Summer Slide
Educators and researchers have long recognized what has come to be known as the “summer slide,” the loss of learning that can take place during the summer months if students do not engage in educational activities. Experts say much of the reading achievement gap seen in 9th grade students nationwide can be traced back to unequal access to summer learning opportunities during the elementary school years. Reversing the summer slide, however, can be as simple as reading more books. In a recent study, Professor Richard Allington of the University of Tennessee at Knoxville and his colleagues found that “giving kids 12 books to read over the summer was as effective as summer school in raising the students’ reading scores.”
Teachers play an important role in helping to create a culture where reading is valued and given priority, even in the summer months. As educators, we can start with six simple action steps to encourage reading over the break:
Read, read, read. Simple as it might sound, making reading a priority in our own lives establishes the credibility necessary to inspire our students to be life-long readers. Some of my favorite reads in 2014 – 2015 include All the Light We Cannot See (Doerr), A Man Called Ove (Backman), The Book Whisperer (Miller), Unbroken (Hillenbrand), The Maze Runner (Dashner), Stranger in a Strange Land (Heinlein), and Dracula (Stoker). A fun way to stay accountable to your students is to have an ongoing policy or a sign in your classroom that states: Ask me what I’m reading right now.
Partner with your local public library. Libraries are wonderful resources for summer reading programs. Chances are a quick look at your local library’s website will yield strong results. Ensuring all students have a registered library card, promoting opportunities for students to visit the local library during the school year through field trips, after school programs, or evenings “meet-ups”, and partnering with your local library teen liaison can help build momentum moving into summer. Dominican University’s Graduate School of Library and Information Studies completed a study confirming “what many librarians have long suspected: students who take part in their local library’s summer reading program significantly improve their reading skills.”
Check out Scholastic.com. Scholastic is leading the way in helping to build literacy by inspiring kids to embrace reading with the same excitement they show for video games, social media, and sports. Programs like Book Trust are helping students make gains by providing students living in poverty access to quality books at no cost. Getting involved is as easy as donating $1. Learn more about Scholastic’s Book Trust program.
Give books as gifts. I wrote an article last year about giving pencils out to students, no strings attached, any time they ask or need one, no matter how many pencils it may cost. It created quite a stir and broke some records at Teaching Tolerance for blog hits. The same idea applies to books. As resourceful teachers, we can find ways to gather books throughout the school year. As an end-of-the-year gift, why not give a kid a book to read over the summer? Even better, get students involved in book clubs that agree to read one book during summer break. Especially for students returning to the same campus, book clubs can help maintain momentum and provide positive accountability for summer reading. Positive peer pressure works even better than teacher encouragement. Students can also get involved in classroom book exchanges, where they swap used books with each other.
Set aside time at school for sustained silent reading. Consider the obvious: Kids do what they enjoy doing. The more kids read self-selected books, the more they will develop a fondness for – and take ownership of – reading. School is one place we can set aside time for kids to read. Demands on teachers are higher than ever; however, we still have some control over what kids do in our classrooms. Simple policies like making sure students always have a book on hand and requiring them to read in class whenever they finish early can drastically increase the minutes kids spend reading each week.
Author Donalyn Miller writes extensively about “stealing minutes” in her book The Book Whisperer. Even in small stints, time set aside for reading can make a difference in kids’ attitudes and affinity. Stealing minutes is as much a life skill as an opportunity. (Miller’s test scores are always high despite her unwillingness to engage in test prep madness.) Teaching kids to look for opportunities to read will benefit them long after their time as students.
Create an email contact list and send encouraging emails once or twice during the summer. A summer email can remind and motivate busy families to add reading to the weekly schedule. Consider sending a couple of emails sharing with families what you are reading and encouraging/reminding them to get that library card, visit a used book store, hit garage sales, etc. for inexpensive books. You can recommend titles, provide reviews of what you are reading, and even plan a date to meet up with families at the local public library for a “check-in/check-out” (check in with each other to check out books) session. Simply communicating with families can make a big difference in how much kids read over the summer.
Chad Donohue teaches English, writing, and social studies at Park Place Middle School in Monroe, Washington. He also teaches composition and public speaking at Northwest University in Kirkland and blogs regularly for Teaching Tolerance.
http://neatoday.org/2015/05/19/6-ways-to-use-reading-to-prevent-the-summer-slide/
Summer Time Activities for Your Children!!!
Now is the time to find summer programs for your children. Look for a balanced program one that incorporates fun with learning. Also, use the summer to explore other talents and interest that your child may have. It may be the perfect time to get them involved with music, theater, or volunteering in your community. Make a conscious effort to have them read out loud to you and you read out loud to them for at least a total of 20 minutes a day. If you will be traveling a lot I suggest getting some eBooks downloaded and have them read on the road. You can also make up some reading and focus games while traveling. For example, I Spy the letter A or who can read the signs the fastest or how many blue cars/trucks do you see. These are activities that will help keep their minds actively learning.
Summer time doesn’t have to mean a time for kids to lose momentum for the upcoming school year it is a time to enhance their talents and academic strengths with thinking out the box modes of teaching them so that they are eager to begin the next school year. Show them that learning is fun and happens outside of the classroom as well.
Summer Time!!!
NCLB Changes
May 11, 2015
Education Week reporter Ben Herold explores how technology is shaping teaching and learning and the management of schools. Join the discussion as he analyzes the latest developments.
46280
46280
« Many High School Students Bringing Their Own Devices to School, Survey Finds | Main | Digital Content Provider EdX Settles With DOJ After Allegations of Inaccessibility »
‘Open Educational Resources’ Promoted in U.S. Senate’s ESEA Draft
<!–
<!–
–>
“Open educational resources” have gained popularity in several states and districts, and it turns out the concept has support on Capitol Hill, too.
A bipartisan amendment to the U.S. Senate’s rewrite of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act includes language encouraging the use of the free, modifiable, and openly licensed resources.
The amendment was sponsored by Republican Orrin Hatch, of Utah—whose state has taken a lead role in encouraging the use of open resources—and Democrat Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, and it was approved by a voice vote in the Senate. The overall bill, as my colleagues at Politics K-12 have reported, awaits a vote of the full chamber. The House’s rewrite of the ESEA, meanwhile, appears to be in a holding pattern.
The amendment is meant to encourage schools “to use and share open educational resources to disseminate best-practices and provide an alternative to costly textbooks,” Sen. Hatch said in a statement to Education Week.
“It also allows teachers to share content with one another and adapt the content to reflect their own unique classroom needs. We should all support customized, sharable content making its way to teachers and their classrooms.”
The amendment encourages the use of open resources—which typically are alternatives to proprietary products created by commercial companies—through grants the ESEA makes available to states.
Applicants for grants to states must, among other provisions, provide “an assurance that [they] will consider making content widely available through open educational resources when making purchasing decisions with funds,” according to the language in the amendment.
Another section encourages state grant applicants to “provide tools and processes to support the creation, modification, and distribution of open educational resources.”
Open educational resources are generally defined as free materials created under a license that allows them to be shared, modified, and repurposed by teachers and other users to meet their individual instructional needs.
Commercial publishers sometimes cast doubts on the quality and value of open resources, and question how easily they can be integrated into instructional materials used by most schools. They argue that it’s not easy for schools to rely on open materials, because teachers and others in districts end up having to devote many hours trying to sort through them to find the curricula and lessons that meet their needs.
Some proponents of open-ed resources agree that districts adopting those materials face an initial heavy lift. But they also say that process results in teachers gaining a deeper understanding of the content they’re covering, and how to deliver it.
The Senate’s inclusion of language on open educational resources heartened TJ Bliss, a program officer for the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, which has made significant investments in supporting open content.
Federal policymakers are responding to the interest that states and districts have shown in open materials because of their potential to reduce costs and provide teachers with content specifically tailored to their needs, he said.
“It signals that OER is a nonpartisan issue,” Bliss said in an interview. “People are starting to pay attention to OER because it can solve problems that people care about.”
(Disclosure: the Hewlett foundation provides support for Education Week’s coverage of attempts to provide students with “deeper learning.” Education Week retains sole editorial control over its content.)
[UPDATE: In February, the U.S. House of Representatives also approved an amendment sponsored by Rep. Jared Polis of Colorado, a Democrat, that would make it clear that federal funds through the proposal could be used to support “open-access textbooks and open educational resources.” The House measure was never brought to a vote in that chamber.
In remarks during the House’s deliberations, Polis said his measure—which makes up just a few lines of text—was aimed at bringing “cost savings to school districts, cost savings to families, and quality enhancements and educational enhancements to those districts, schools, and States that embrace” the resources.
Today, some schools are forced to use “old dog-eared textbooks,” Polis said, according to a transcript, and “outdated and of different versions” of them.
“I have been to a number of classrooms where the teacher has to say, ‘For your assignment, if you have this version, read pages 33 through 35,'” the lawmaker said. “‘If you have this version, it is 36 through 38. If you don’t have any version, here’s a few copies in front that we’ll give to you.’ That gets in the way of a quality education.”]
The current version of ESEA, the No Child Left Behind Act, does not include language directly supporting open resources, noted Douglas A. Levin, a consultant and analyst on ed-tech policy. There’s an obvious reason for that, he noted: Open educational resources hadn’t really come into focus as a defined concept at the time NCLB was approved by Congress, and was signed into law by former President George W. Bush in 2002.
Since then, advocates for open education have pushed unsuccessfully for its inclusion in a number of federal education proposals, said Levin, who supported those efforts. One measure of victory, he pointed out, came in language included in the federal guidance for the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (better known as the stimulus bill) that emphasized how recipients of funding could spend it on educational technology.
Whether the language supporting open educational resources survives the push-and-pull of congressional ESEA negotiations in the months ahead remains to be seen.
Photo of Sen. Hatch, taken last month at a hearing of the Senate Finance Committee. By Evan Vucci/AP
See also:
- Calculating the Academic Return on ‘Open’ Educational Resources
- Free Online Content Forces Publishers to Adjust
- K-12 Print Needs Persist Despite Digital Growth
Follow @EdWeekSCavanagh and @EdWeekIandI for the latest news on industry and innovation in education.
FREE Technology Resources from EducationCity!!!!
Free Computing Resources from EducationCity!
EducationCity has released a new Computing module and we want you to check it out! We’ve put together these free lessons and activities on digital literacy, information technology, and computer science.
Edmentum, Inc.
TruthEd101 